beginning to reflect concern about his behavior, mental functioning, maturity level and fitness for the office. event haves tavents have taken the press. >> appreciate you guys. thank you that is "all in" for this evening. "the rachel maddow show" starts now. >> good evening, joy, thanks for helping the ship so ably when i was gone. >> you're welcome. >> when you go to heaven, you'll get a lot of days off work. like one big snooze bar for you, joy reid. every morning you think you have to go to work and god will say uh-uh, sleep in, baby. >> i love it. >> that's how it works. >> have a great show. >> thanks to you at home for joining us. >> it's really great to be back. raise your hand if you're wearing longjohns right now? [ laughter ] >> me, too. national weather service is not putting a shine on this thing.

bit early cold temperatures and dangerous windchills to persist east of the rockies into the weekend, lake effect snowfall will continue down wind of the great lakes, reinforcing shots of arctic air will continue across much of the eastern half of the country through this week. keeping high temperatures as much as 10 to 20 at the kndegre normal. snow and ice as far down as the carolinas into florida and that's all before it gets really cold. look at this head lane at the washington post tonight. bomb cyclone to bomb east coast before polar vortex uncorks cold late this week. happy new year. happy balm cyclone. balm and cyclone sound bad. not only did i not know that was a thing you have to worry about, who knew that's a thing you have to worry about in the weather?

bomb cyclone. in the wake of the east coast storm that we're getting, they are saying the cold in the wake of the storm will be 20 to 40 degrees below normal for friday and saturday. so, like i said, long underwear. you and me both. i'm not ashamed. this new year is starting with literal bluster in the form of this extreme weather but bluster characterizes the news. kim jong-un is ringing in 2018 by same tan uimultaneously offes with south korea about his country being allowed into the olympics next month and he's announced quote, the entire u.s. territories are within our firing range and the nuclear missile button is there on my desk. this is not a threat but reality. president trump responded to that tonight by saying quote, north korean leader kim jong-un stated that the nuclear button is on his desk at all times.

will somebody from the regime inform him that i, too, have a nuclear button but a bigger and much powerful one than his and my button works. the president essentially daring the leader of nuclear armed north korea to prove that his button works. this is our world now. meanwhile, protesters in iran continue to defy live ammunition and arrests and now threats of execution by their government as they take to the streets to protest. the immediate catalyst for these iranian protests appears to be an economic cause rather than any one political action by the iranian government but the response of the government to the protesters may well become its own kath licatalyst for widd protests in teheran and around the country. if that government continues to react with the force and panic they have shown thus far, they will likely spar even more protests that have even started.

that's at least how these things tend to go in the world these days. that said, iran finds a way to write it's own very specifically iranian history so i'm not sure anybody knows for sure how things will end up with these big street protests. the trump administration taunting the iranian government over the protests now and taking the protester's side. that's one of the wild cards for that scenario. the fact the iran statements came alongside and apparently out of the blue insult from our president to pakistan, i mean, that just makes everything all the much -- all that much harder to read. nobody knows where the president was going with his anti pakistan out of the blue outbursts today. but it did result in pakistan summoning our ambassador, resulted in street protest in pakistan and pakistan protesters burning the u.s. flag. presumably that is what they wanted for some reason. hard to say. there is a lot to get to

tonight. a lot of stuff that your own government did over the holiday break that they didn't put out announce thments about. we'll report some of that. someone the president just fired without warning or notice at all but we have to start tonight with a little breaking news, it's not often news breaks on the opinion pages of a major newspaper but that just happened tonight in the "new york times." in the past hour this was posted from glenn simpson and peter. the two reporters that founded a washington d.c. based research firm called fusion gps. fusion was a low-profile research firm until a year ago. a year ago this month when buzz feed published a dossier of alleged russian dirt on dlt and his campaign detailed allegations about the russian gov government intervening to help

trump win. that was compiled by a spy, christopher steele. the firm that paid him was fusion gps. trump republicans in congress since tried to make that dossier itself a scandal. they have tried to make fusion itself a scandal. they have tried to discredit the whole special counsel robert mueller led investigation into the potential of trump campaign collusion with russia. they tried to turn that into something that's discredited by it's association with the dossier. but two things have now just happened. they are putting a real wrench in those works in terms of how republicans are trying to fend off the russia investigation and mueller probe in particular. one of them is this new op ed that dropped within the past hour and like i said, it's weird for news to break on the opinion pages of the newspaper but there are a few bombshells here. first of all, fusion's pounders

are calling for the release of the transcripts of their 21-hours of testimony before three different congressional committees. now, if you have been watching the show for awhile, you'll remember this is an issue we've been following for awhile. we first started talking about the transcripts after glen simpson gave ten hours of testimony to the senate judiciary committee. chuck grassly is the head of the committee and said publicly at the time that yeah, the transcript of that testimony would be released to the public. he was asked about it at a town hall at home in iowa and said the transcript would be need to be cleared through fusion, cleared through the lawyers to make sure there wasn't anything in there but once that process was done, he didn't see a reason why that transcript could not be released to the american people. now we reported several weeks ago that that process was complete, that that review to see if anything needed to be redacted from the transcript, that was done. we reported several weeks ago

senator grassly was free to release the transcript like he said he would. he has not released the transcript. the whole reason we made an issue of it. the whole reason i've been talking about it on the air and been interested to see it and you would be, too, is because this was ten hours of sworn testimony behind closed doors. we didn't get to see it. it was ten hours of sworn testimony about that trump russia dossier. by the firm that commissioned it and the firm at the time said that they stood by the dossier. they stood by the va lodocument. they said it's dodge and trash and anything associated discredits the fbi if they use the dossier at all to start the investigation, here is the guys that paid for the work that led to the dossier saying actually, we know better than anybody what's in there and stand by it and then giving ten hours

initially of sworn testimony to back that up. wouldn't you want to see what they had to say to back it up? when we first found out there was a transcript and fusion would be okay with it being released, obviously, we wanted to see what testimony they were able to give to support these claims. well, we still haven't seen those ten hours of transcripts, nor have we seen transcripts from the republican led committees where fusion has been called in to testify. tonight, fusion is calling for those to be released and they are putting icing on the cake. quote, we walked investigators in these congressional hearing, we walked investigators through our year-long effort to decipher mr. trump's complex business past of which the steele dossier is but one chapter. republicans are refused to release full transcriptsively l.

it's time to share what the company told investigators and then in this op ed released tonight at the "new york times", they do that at least they share some of what their company has told investigators and this is stuff we have not heard before. this is all new. quote, we suggested investigators look into the bank records of deutsche bank. congress appears uninterested in that tip. reportedly, our bank records, fusion's bank records are the only they have subpoenaed. we told congress from manhattan to sunny isles beach florida we found wide spread evidence that trump and his organization had worked with a wide array of dubious russians in arrangements that raised questions about money laundering. like wise, those deals don't seem to interest congress. also, quote, we explained how from the past journal liistjour

we were familiar with the coziness and those close to vladimir putin. yes, we hired christopher steele but we did so without informing steele whom we were working for and gave no specific marching orders beyond this basic question. why did mr. trump repeatedly seek to do deals in a th notoriously corrupt police state? came back shocked us. mr. steel's sources in russia who were not paid reported on an extensive and now confirmed effort by the kremlin to help elect mr. trump president. mr. steele saw this and decided he needed to report it to the fbi. we did not discussi the decisio instead we deferred to mr. steel, a professional with a long history, we did not speak to the fbi and we haven't since. quote, after the election mr. steele decided to share his intelligence with senator john

mccain via an emissary. we're extremely proud of our work to highlight mr. trump's russia ties is our right under the first amendment. the public still has much to learn about a man with the most troubling business past. trump should release transcripts so the american public can learn the truth about our work and most importantly, what happened to our democracy. again, coming tonight from the two founders of fusion gps say they have given republican-led committees in congress information on trump's relationship with the bank, business dealings with the organization that raised questions about money laundering and did not want the dossier published. they say the russian sources for christopher steele and dossier were not paid.

they say they didn't want the dossier published when buzz feed published it. they say they did get it into the hands of john mccain. they say they did not meet themselves with the fbi. and then there is this one last thing, quote, we don't believe the steele dossier was the trigger for the fbi's investigation into russia meddling. as we told the judiciary committee in august, they said the dossier was taken seriously because it corroborated reports the fbi received from other sources including one inside the trump camp. now that last claim from this, again, op ed piece, weird place to break news but that's where it's breaking. that last claim that the christopher steele dossier wasn't what started the fbi's counter intelligence investigation into whether or not the trump campaign colluded with russia. we are now learning tonight that the guys behind the dossier told the senate that in august, maybe that's why the republicans and the senate don't want to release

transcripts, but we've also just had a big new piece of public reporting that corroborates that, as well, not from the op ed pages but reporting pages of the "new york times", this bombshell story which doesn't just say that the dossier isn't why the fbi started its counter intelligence operation. this "new york times" story explains what did lead to the fbi counter intelligence investigation. according to the times, george papadopoulos is coordinating with the investigation. according to the times, he got drunk in london last may and on a drinking binge, he told a top austrus australian tip mat, that, nobody

knew that. ent even the dnc didn't know e-mails had been stolen. russia knew they were stolen and apparently this guy papadopoulos from the trump campaign knew it, too, and bragged about it and who knows if the uaustralians even believed him when he first said it on the drunken evening in london last may but two months later when russia, in fact, started circulating the clinton campaign e-mails, well, then, australia realized this had inside information. and the australians called the fbi. quote, the hacking and the revelation a member of the trump campaign may have had inside information about it were driving factors that led the fbi to open an investigation in july of 2016 to russia's attempts to disrupt the election and whether any of president trump's associates conspired.

instead, it was first-hand information from one of america's closest intelligence allies. so says this new reporting from "the new york times" this weekend and so says the firm that paid for the dossier as of just about one hour ago tonight. joining us now is washington investigations editor for "the new york times." it's really nice to have you here tonight. thanks very much for being here. >> thanks, rachel. good to be back. >> let me see if i understand both the drama and the implications of this pretty incredible peace of repoiece of. the drama involves human interaction between the campaign foreign policy advisor george papadopoulos and australian diplomat that didn't react initially to what papadopoulos was telling him as if it was something red hot, as if it was something potentially damming. part of it is there was a delay of a couple months before australia saw this as important enough to deliver to u.s. authorities, right?

>> right. the drinking session in london happened in may of 2016. this was a couple weeks after, according to mueller's documents, papadopoulos learned about this russian dirt, the dirt that russians had on hillary clinton from this london professor who appears to be a russian cutout. so he talks to the australian alexander downer in may of 2016, but it's not until two months later, july 2016 when downer in a cable relays this to other parts of his government and then that is relaided to threlaid at lunch launches the investigation. it's around the same time when the dnc e-mails are leaking out on the eve of the democratic convention. it is possible, we haven't confirmed this yet, this becomes public and the australian government realizes what it's sitting on and notifies the u.s. government. >> what was damming hear in

particular was the timing. as i said, now we're hearing the russians had tons of stolen e-mails and dirt on hillary clinton. we've heard so much about that it washes over us. in may 2016 there was no public information that anything had been stolen, that the russians had been involved in any sort of disinformation campaign about clinton. that would have been, that would have sounded crazy or at least sounded like news at that time, right? >> right. certainly was not -- people were not focused on it at all nearly to the extend we are now or for the last year. i think papadopoulos mentioning this, it may not have raised the alarms as it did a couple of months later. why this drinking session happened, why papadopoulos met, it's unclear. he had just been named two months earlier as a member of trump's foreign policy team. it's possible that as a man living in london, some diplomats from close american allies might

want to get a feel for the candidate and his team, but again, that's a little bit of speculation. what is obviously more important is the information conveyed and where it went from there. >> now, one of the crucial questions here, if mr. papadopoulos does, as you reported, if he did have advanced knowledge what the russians had done in the intervention into the election and he knew about that months before any of that was public, the question is whether or not he was a loan ane actor and hadt alone and ever discuss that information with the trump campaign. you do say at one point in your reporting that while he continued to for months to try to arrange meetings between the trump campaign and the russian government, he kept senior campaign advisors abreast of those efforts to set up a meeting but do we know if he was in communication with anybody else in the trump world about his information, about what the russians were doing to intervene

in the campaign? >> we know from both documents that mueller put out, as well as some e-mails that we quote in our story, that papadopoulos was keeping the campaign including steven miller and others informed about what he was hearing, particularly about trying to set up a meeting between trump and putin. the day after he hears about these e-mails, he sends a note to miller basically saying i'm hearing interesting messages about this possible meeting. i should be clear, there is no public evidence now yet that he told anyone in the campaign about the e-mails or this alleged dirt. the mueller documents are silent on that. recall, it was in october when the dock thes came out where we first lea first learned about the documents and he had been told about this dirt and these thousands of e-mails. those documents are silent on

the issue did he tell anyone and it's still unclear. >> one last quick question, mark. it's about a speech. from your reporting, mr. papadopoulos was trusted enough to edit the outline of the first major foreign policy speech and addressing whether the candidate said it was impossible to improve relations with russia. papadopoulos was telling one of them it should be taken quote as the signal to meet. what does that mean? >> good question. i mean, read one way, it means, you know, he is trying to broker this meeting, which he thinks is going to basically make him in the campaign. he's starting out as an advisor very low profile. nobody has really heard of him and if he brokers the meeting, it's going to be big for his career and his life in the campaign. now, it's possible red one way the speed that gave positive

signs where trump would be, that he's using that as a signal that trump wants to meet putin for maybe a public meeting to discuss policy. it's cryptic and something we'll look at further. at this point it's a little speculation when he means there. >> washington investigations reporter, red hot reporting. thanks for helping us understand what it means. >> thanks. big night, lots to cut to tonight. be right back. stay with us.

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in mid december, they voted to make a big change to something that people really didn't want changed. not saying that just impressi impressionally but there is day to to prove it. there was a national poll about what the trump administration was about to do. 83% of the american people said they were against it. among republicans, 75% of republicans were against it. in december they did it anyway. that's the net neutrality. that happened december 14th. whether or not you particularly care about that issue and whether you care about the cable company or internet provider having the ability to control and see what you use online. when the trump administration used the change, human beings didn't want them to make the change. i'm sure companies did but the american people were 83% opposed. and this happens in politics.

you see government officials, congress, presidential administrations make decisions wildly at odds but in that particular vote there was something odd about it. turns out something had gone haywire with the system of public comment about that rule before they voted on it. the fcc received about 22 million comments about that issue before they took their vote. that's a huge amount of comments. and there was a certain degree of public chantransparency. the first thing people noticed is there were a bunch of duplicat duplicates. there were hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands of times. maybe that's just a predictable abuse of the online forum to submit the comments but it turned out not to be just the duplicates. there was a lot of comments sent in under obviously fake names or no names. then the next revelations got even stranger.

turns out more than half a million e-mail addresses in russia were used to submit comments on the net neutrality rule. what does russia care about the net neutrality rules? right? russian computers appear to be the source for hundreds of thousands of comments for the rule and against the rule. why did they do that? then came the even more unsettling revelations that a lot of comments sent in by what appeared to be real americans, people with names and e-mail addresses and those comments overwhelmingly in favor of the position, no favor of getting rid of net neutrality. a nug number of those appear to have been faked. that was more upsetting with comments with no names or donald duck or mickey mouse. these were real american identities, real american people's names matched up with addresses, phone numbers, e-mail addresses that matched up to real people but those real

people hadn't submitted these comments. on june 2nd, donna in lake bluff, illinois wrote to the fcc saying obama was ordering a control of the web that was an exploitation of the open internet and that was a crazy argument but what was crazier about the comment is that that person, donna in lake bluff, illinois at that specific address which was listed in her comment, she's someone who died 12 years ago. so she did not submit that comment. somebody hijacked her identity including her name and address to create the false appearance of support for what the trump administration did with that rule. and that appears to have happened hundreds of thousands if not millions of times in the comments accepted by that federal agency before they made this deeply, deeply unpopulated decision to kill net neutrality. whether or not you care about that as an issue, the trump administration voting to scrap it when 83% of the public

disagreed, that was weird. what was really weird is learning about this universe of fake public comment that was created around that decision including stealing the identities of real americans living and dead to make it seem like there was support for the trump administration's decision that didn't exist in nature. that was a weird thing about the net neutrality decision last month. now it turns out it was not an isolated incident. the wall street journal did the front line reporting that exposed that weird stolen identity stuff around the fake comments on the net neutrality decision. the journal reports it is happening again. this time on a role related to the financial sector. one of the reforms after the wall street crash was designed to prevent wall street firms and financial advisors from coning old people out of retirement savings and the proposed fix was very, very simple. it was something called the fi e that is complicated and

surprising. any investor handling somebody's retirement account has to act in the best interests of their client. that's that's the whole rule. if you're managing somebody's retirement money, you have to manage it in a way that benefits them, not you. that's the rule. lots of things about wall street and banking and financial regulation are complex and controversial. this is not one of those things. new rule, can't screw the client. it's very hard to argue against that rule. that rule to protect old people from getting conned out of retirement savings was supposed to be in effect as of now. trump administration appears to be against it. they backed it and decided to delay it to obtain more public comment on the matter. the wall street journal reports that again, somehow mysteriously the public comments being submitted about this thing are fake. quote, a pennsylvania

salesperson on the labor department website opposed says i do not need, want and object. in an interview, he said he didn't post it and discuss people can make comments using my name. they contact people whose names appear on the comments because they offered public opinion on the rule. they interviewed 50 people about the comments on the rule. 40% of them, 20 out of the 50 people said the comments were fraud and that actually wasn't something they did. so this is somehow somebody somewhere obtaining american's names, e-mail addresses and phone numbers for real americans but hijacking those people's identities to submit public comment and make it seem like

they are making public komcomme in favor of the trump administration's policy and the trump administration is using it to justify what they intend to do. the wall street journal is out in front of the reporting on this strange phenomenon. they have identified fake comments and real american's names at five different agencies now. all agencies considering rule changes that could have a big effect on people's lives. so 2017 was an unsettling year in american politics. whether or not you like the results of the election, whether or not you like the way the trump administration and republicans and congress have been approaching things since they have been in control, for most americans it's fair to say it's a little unsettling and unnerving and disorienting to realize there are unseen forces at work in our politics, right? a year ago this week the director of national intelligence released the version of the assessment that

russia intervened in the election to help trump and hurt clinton. american politics has been hardball and americans through the political processes have made some good and bad decisions since our founding but there is something discombobulated, something nauseating to know our american fate isn't just being decided by the more or less rational decisions of our fellow americans and elected american leaders. it's weird for us to realize there are forces we can't see faking our political processes. aping them. pretending to be us when they are not us. now, though, we know it's happening in an on going way. the election wasn't a one off. i don't know who is faking the public comments on rules changes but if our political processes at different levels are being faked, live and dead americans are being impersonated, is it better or worse if it's foreign

intelligence services or maybe special interests and lobbyists or hackers for hire? your call. what is weirder? is worse? happy new year. in the wake of the revelations this past year about russia's involvement in the presidential electionrussia's efforts online targeting us using social media, a group called the alliance for securing democracy puts on activity with 600 twitter accounts that appear to be linked to the effort by the russia government to influence the election last year and continue to influence american politics and public opinions since trump was elected. just as we don't have a lot of clarity as to why hundreds of thousands of russian e-mail addresses were contributing comments about net neutrality, i think it's also hard to see any given day what exactly russia is trying to accomplish with on going efforts to influence online discussion about american news and politics throughout this past year moving forward

but even if on a day to day basis we don't know their exact motivations, exactly what they are trying to accomplish and sometimes it seems muddy, we can see they are still active online targeting us. and we can see it in part through tools like this russian influence tracker on twitter. the most recent snapshot they took about what kremlin oriented twitter accounts online before the roy moore senate election, 14% of the time the accounts were posting on the issue of sexual misconduct, which is a very big topic of discussion on american politics. the russian leaked twitter accounts, half the tweets on sexual misconduct defended roy moore on this subject and the other half attacked democrats. the most prominent theme from the cell lykremlin was the fbi to discredit the fbi. second most prominent topic discussed by the accounts was sna mike flynn pleading guilty.

the kremlin linked accounts had a specific take that attacked media organizations for erroneously reporting information about flynn's guilty plea. they focused on a conspiracy theory that blamed the obama administration and a theory that appears to be totally made up but russian-linked accounts promoted that last month. and again, there was the focus on the fbi. nearly half the kremlin linked accounts tweeting about the flynn plea were voted to discredit the fbi for their role in the russia investigation and flynn's plea. if you feel weird and unsettled by american politics, there is a reason for that. we're used to having debates and fights among ourselveourselves. occasionally insane or extreme fights but we're used to having debates and fights specifically among ourselves, among americans but now in our generation and our lifetimes, this year in our politics, there is another type of player, a foreign influence

that is impersonating americans, throwing peanuts from the peanut gallery trying to skew american fights and disagreements in ways that weaken us and there by help them and sometimes poorly disguised. we can sometimes see what they are doing from online behavior what their influence operation is trying to do now is try to discredit the fbi, knowing that, is an important part of regaining and not being discome ba -- discombobulated. it does put a new cast on the fact that their efforts appear to be gaining some traction since president trump has been in office. obviously, he's fired the fbi director but over the holiday break, we laerearned the chief counsel is mysteriously being reassigned for unknown reasons. a 25-year fbi veteran.

the deputy direct will be retiring. it isn't a big deal until you realize he's 49 years old and came under sustained political tack from the president himself and those who support trump in congre congress. fbi is under attack from supporters and also from the on going russia influence operation that's still around since the election. what's different now is that the fbi is starting to bleed out. the fbi is starting to shed top officials in a process that seems just as likely to appease the attacks as it does to slow them down. wore lederhosen. when i first got on ancestry i was really surprised that i wasn't finding all of these germans in my tree. i decided to have my dna tested through ancestry dna. the big surprise was we're not german at all.

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at the holiday season and face of the brutally cold temperatures not just here for the holidays but been here and aren't leaving, spare a thought for your local letter carrier, right? your local package delivery person. always tough this time of year but this year with this weather, ashl around the holidays, people are excited about the packages that get sent and received. this time a year of important americans got a package with fedex that got bad and

inexplicable news from the trump administration about a firing. that bpackage is next. stay with us. steyer: the president's national security adviser -- guilty. his campaign chairman -- under indictment. his son-in-law -- secret talks with russians. the director of the fbi -- fired. special counsel robert mueller's criminal investigation has already shown why the president should be impeached. you can send a message to your representatives at needtoimpeach.com and demand they finally take a stand. this president is not above the law.

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living with hiv offer advice how the federal government can better respond to the aids crisis, how they can better educate the public and offer better health care to those living with hiv and the rest. started with that executive order 22 years later, todays after christmas this year, it all ended with a fedex delivery with no warning and no explanation, every single member of the presidential advisory counsel on hiv and aids received a letter from the president via fedex letting him or her know they have been terminated terminated effecty iterminated t immediately. there was no warning. the presidential advisory counsel still exists but every single seat is empty. one of those seats used to belong to gabrielle, former member now of the presidential advisory counsel on hiv and aids

and the director of the hiv and aids group called true evolution. nice to have you here tonight. >> thank you for having me, it's an honor. >> like wise. thank you for your service. did you have any idea you and your fellow commissioners were about to be fired? >> no, it caught me by surprise. it's been a year we've been serving. it was unclear, it was a shock to me. >> i know there were some members of the advisory ounce that will decided they did not want to serve under mr. trump and resigned earlier. i can imagine that may have been a source of friction. was the counsel meeting? were there policy disappoingred? >> yeah, we definitely continuing meeting. i searched as co-chair of the disparities committee making

plans for initiatives and policy recommendations i wanted to put forth next year. like in any counsel, we have differences of opinions and approaching public health and how we see hiv and and aids pol. i would definitely say that our council were strong architects and many of us were contributing authors of the national hiv strategy which was strongly support and included with the affordable care act. when you talk about fundamental differences, many of us on the council had fundamental differences from the direction this administration seems to have taken. >> now my impression of aids policy at the national level over the last couple of decades, since the council was first created is it's one of the few issues on which democrats and liberals, people living with aids, the gay community might actually find a few nice things to say about george w. bush. there weren't that many. there weren't all that many issues in that column in terms of the george w. bush

administration. but the council in particular and the work of the national aids policy, the national aids-related policy was i think particularly because of the bush administration as being not the most partisan thing in the world. certainly there were differences of opinions, differences how things could be funded. but this was something where the partisan heat had been removed. >> absolutely. hiv and aids is not a partisan issue. it's a human issue. it's a human rights issue. it's a civil rights issue. it's a social justice issue. it crosses all boundaries. it does not discriminate on the basis of religion, race, immigration status. as a person living with hiv myself, i can say that my hiv does shot from a term limit. it doesn't expire or leave when new administration goes or comes. my hiv and for the 1.2 million people in this country living with hiv, this is something that we have dealt with for the last 30 years and will continue in the foreseeable future to deal with for many administrations to come.

so to put political ideology or partisanship at the forefront in the decision-makinging is not only damaging to the work that we have done, but it is also stagnating for advancing the lives and health outcome cans of those of us living with hiv and the communities that are hardest impacted. >> gabriel maldonado, executive director of the lgbt and aids group true evolution and now very recently a former member of the presidential advisory council on hiv and aids. thank you for helping us understand this story. will you keep us apprised if in terms of the future of the council but also what is going to happen with the standoff. i'd love to hear from you again. >> absolutely, rachel thanks very much for having me. >> a lot of things the trump administration has done policy wise are honestly typical republican things. things that the trump republicans in congress might have wanted to do anyway. getting rid of the aids council doesn't make sense in partisan terms or any other terms with continuity in recent american politics. i don't know why they did this.

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today the longest serving republican in the senate orrin hatch announced he will not run for his seat again in november. and look what happened right after he made that announcement. mitt romney moved. the little location tag for his twitter account had said massachusetts. but then orrin hatch retired and now bingo, mitt romney's twitter

tag now says he is from utah again. it's amazing how that happens. tomorrow two new members of the united states senate will be sworn in, both democrats. doug jones, the first democratic senator from alabama in more than two decades, and tina smith, who was the lieutenant governor of minnesota. she will be finishing out the term of minnesota democrat al franken who left the senate today after sexual harassment allegations. both jones and smith will be sworn in tomorrow. and neither of those is a pseudonym. we'll be right back. statins lower cholesterol,

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we are out of time for tonight. i do want to recap briefly the breaking news we had at the top of the show tonight. news breaking in a weird place on the opinion pages of the "new york times." the founders of fusion gps tonight releasing a lot of new information in this op-ed, including their belief that the dossier that they commissioned created by christopher steele about allegations involving donald trump and russia, they believe that dossier was not the source of the fbi counterintelligence investigation into the trump campaign and russia. the founders of fusion also say they handed over to congress information about potential moneylaundering involving the president and his businesses. they're also calling for congress to release the transcripts of their testimony before three congressional committees. that's does it for us tonight. we'll see you again tomorrow. now it's time for "the last word with lawrence o'donnell." good evening. >> good evening, rachel. as you can see, a you know, when a gu